The Network Capacity Allocation (NCA) analysis will determine based on submitted forecasts how much generation can be offered for a 24 hour period without creating network congestion or voltage problems. Currently with the number of DER units that are being added to the distribution network situations can arise that create congestion and/or voltage issues on the system if all DER resource were contributing power at the same time. The NCA analysis will run ahead of time to determine based on generation schedules submitted by the generators problems will arise. If it is determined that issues will be created the NCA analysis will begin curtailing units that are capable of relieving issues. The analysis will look at the highest cost unit and begin curtailing that unit first. If the curtailment relieves the violations, no other units will be curtailed if the analysis determines the issue is still present the next highest cost unit will be curtailed, the analysis will continue until all units have been curtailed or violations eliminated. When generating solutions for the analysis each hour will be evaluated independently such that a unique set of generation values will be generated for each hour. The analysis can be setup to either consider or ignore pre-existing conditions. If a feeder is setup to ignore pre-existing conditions it will discard any congestion or voltage issues that existed before the generation schedules were taken into account. For example, if a feeder has a flow constraint without any market participant DERs being taken into account that specific constraint issue will be ignored when the analysis is run. If a feeder is setup to consider pre-existing conditions all violations will be considered such that if anything is made worse by the forecast schedules for the DER units the units will begin being curtailed to relieve any possible issues.

To enable the Network Capacity Allocation (NCA) analysis the following pieces of data and configuration will need to be set up:

The following table will need to be populated with a project defined process or adapter. This table is used to store the forecast output and pricing information for each DER unit participating in the NCA analysis. The table will hold information on an hour by hour basis to represent the output levels the generator plans to operate at and the pricing information the power can be produced at for that same hour. This data will be used as inputs into the analysis to determine if all proposed generation will create congestion issues on the network. The pricing information will be used to determine which generator to curtail first.